Re-cap: 30 Observations About Last Night’s 30 Rock

Every Friday, we’ll be recapping Season Five of NBC’s 30 Rock with a weekly list of 30 Observations About Last Night’s 30 Rock. Do remember to check VF Daily every week for said list, and feel free to leave your additional notes in the comments.1. Tracy and Donald’s very literal interpretation of “opportunity knocking” was a great cold open.

We’re not wild about jokes like “Brown and Folderson” that only make sense retroactively. At the beginning of the episode, Tracy and Donald informed Jack that investors from Brown and Folderson have already agreed to support their restaurant, but it’s not until the end of the episode that Tracy reveals “Brown and Folderson” is a nickname for his own wallet. The joke is not funny the first time, because it means nothing, and the subsequent exposition is not clever enough to justify the emptiness.

Liz knew and dated a number of “girls dressed like guys to get journalism scholarships.”

Like Tina Fey, your blogger is a former resident of the northwestern Philadelphia suburbs. We very much enjoyed the mention of a fictitious shopping mall called the Schuylkill Galleria. There is, sadly, no such galleria, although there is a King of Prussia Mall.

We ask this gently, as we do not want to offend the child actor in question, but, young Liz Lemon is played by a boy, right?

Jane Krakowski managed to effectively convey both resentment and passive aggression during her tongue-tip kiss with Paul in a squalid alleyway.

A vagabond’s cry of “Get a room—whatever that is!” made us laugh out loud.

Jenna’s pronunciation of a “suburb”—“soo-barb”—was so unexpected and funny, especially considering Jenna is from one such soo-barb.

When Kenneth began to tell Jack about his childhood mentor, Harold, Jack turned to the camera and whispered, “Please let Harold be a human.” In our opinion, this was the funniest line of the show.

A close second being Kenneth’s perfectly timed reply that Harold was a pig.

“I once at an entire witch
” was a small, wonderful revelation in Kenneth’s story about Harold.

It always feels delightfully conspiratorial and subversive whenever 30 Rock pokes fun at NBC. (The apex of such humor was a promo for Bitch Hunter, a forthcoming reality series produced by one Ben Silverman.) In this episode, Jack consoled Kenneth by reminding him that he was “the lowest-level employee at the last-place network in America.”

Jack’s story about his school play was clunky and knotty.

We also don’t believe that Jack, who’d been boasting of his mental and emotional detachment the entire episode, would have been so easily coaxed into sentimentalism by his brief chat with Kenneth.

As much as we did not care for any part of Jack’s flashback, the school play’s inclusion of a salute to “heroes who fight Communists” was very funny.

Is it just us, or did Donald’s hair turn progressively grayer throughout the episode? Maybe it was due to the stress that must come with running a successful Times Square theme restaurant.

Speaking of this restaurant, could 30 Rock not have filmed these scenes inside an actual restaurant? Staples looked like the lobby of a suburban airport Marriott.

Are we the only ones who thought that Liz was going to kiss (or date) the man inside the Godzila suit?

Liz, by the way, looked great last night. We loved all her form-fitting blazers and neat striped shirts.

Jack’s story about his childhood reminded us that it’s high time for another Alan Alda cameo as Jack’s father.

A very solid episode! All plotlines were funny and fast-paced.

We think Liz’s exclamation of “What a world!” is a reference to the wise_kaplan Twitter feed and refuse to consider any arguments to the contrary.